Thursday, August 26, 2010

Go Away, Morning

A post from s.e. smith at This Ain't Livin' on a topic dear to my heart: sleep schedules.

It begins crisply with the observation that "It is generally agreed upon in our society that people who wake up early are better people."

Seriously!

With the 'healthy, wealthy and wise,' thing, the early bird getting the worm, the whole idea that smart, productive people sleep little, and get up first thing in the morning, the better to beat the day into submission--while the late-sleepers are slugabeds, layabouts, and probably up to no good anyway, staying up all night.

If one person sleeps from 4am to noon, and one sleeps from 10pm to 6am, the second one will pretty generally be seen as the one who's getting things done and being a hard-working, upstanding, in-fitting member of society.

Hmph. As a person who has long been no fan of early mornings, but is trapped by the modern business day (plus an hourlong commute), I am filled with bitterness regarding this popular myth. If I could have set up a work schedule that involved being in business from about 11am to 7pm, I would have been all over that.

Of course, that would actually be possible in many libraries, but I happened on one where the librarians work standard business hours. And I have to say, I've kind of gotten used to it, and I appreciate the fact that this way my schedule more closely matches those of people with whom I may feel like meeting up after work, so there are advantages.

That doesn't mean it's not still true that the only thing that gives me the energy to get out of bed in the morning is the brisk surge of loathing with which I greet each fresh new dawn.

Pfah. I scoff at the dawn. It can keep its rosy fingers to itself.

.

2 comments:

brian said...

do you loathe at dawn only "part-time" or has it been full-time lately? Lately, I've actually been experimenting with this thing called "get 8 hours of sleep". I haven't tried to avoid it, but it usually avoids me :-)

A'Llyn said...

I loathe all the time!--though on weekends I can usually sleep through it. But yes, I work five days a week.